Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/220

 could be brought about, the Hudson's Bay Company was asked for passage for two Catholic priests from Montreal to Oregon. To this mission, the Archbishop of Quebec appointed Rev. Francis Norbet Blanchet, whose portrait appears on another page, and gave him as an assistant. Rev. Modeste Demers, from the Red River settlement. The trip to Oregon was uneventful, until the party reached the Little Falls of the Columbia, where in descending the rapids, one of the boats was wrecked and nearly half the company drowned. The priests were received at Fort Colville with the same friendliness as had greeted the Protestant missionaries in eastern Oregon; and during a stay of four days, nineteen natives were baptized, mass was said and much interest taken in the services. The appearance of the priests in their dark robes, the mythical signs of reverence, and unconcern for secular affairs, undoubtedly impressed the savages. Blanchet summed up his labors for the winter of 1838-9, at one hundred and thirty-four baptisms, nine funerals, and fort.y-nine marriages. He not only married the unmarried Indians, but he re-married those that the Protestant ministers had united, to the great disgust of the Methodists and withdrew many from the temperance society and prayer meetings, organized by the Methodists—and right there the religious war commenced. During the year 1840, the rivalry between the Catholics and Methodists was pushed with bitterness on both sides.

Here now is the proposition. What permanent good did these men accomplish for the Indian? Two Protestants—Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman, and two Catholics, Francis N. Blanchet and Peter John De Smet. They each gave the entire influence of their respective creeds and churches. And each and all of them, were singularly and remarkably well qualified for the work they had undertaken; and each man, put his whole soul, mind and body into the work he had freely devoted his life to serve. And what effect has it had upon the mind and condition of the Indian? The Indian is here yet subsisting partly upon the bounty of the government, and partly by the shiftless, precarious labor of his hands. One in a hundred rises above his fellows in mental, moral and financial acquirements. But the general average of listless inactivity of mind and body is about the same. Religious teaching is still patiently pressed upon the Indian; but with the exception of Father Wilbur's work among the Yakimas, the results are insignificant. And yet very much the same might be said of religious teaching among the whites. But what has been the uplift to the Indian? We are presenting a question of evolution. This book is presenting that question in various ways.

When the missionaries came to Oregon, the Indian that could,

accepted them as ministers of the Great Spirit, keepers of the "Book of Heaven" and superior beings. He took the white man as a friend, but found him too often to be a despoiler of his wives, a trader in fire water, that robbed him of his peltries and appropriated his hunting grounds. And although the ministers of religion treated him kiudl.v and justly as far as their personal intercourse went, they did not and could not Stay the tide of immigration which overran